Quote:Bob Scott
Would like to hear a little more on your application
This may be very boring but since you asked I will attempt to describe to the best of my ability how I am trying to use Sesame. Let me start with a disclaimer saying that there might be better ways to accomplish my tasks but with my limited knowledge of programming this seems to be a good way to go. There are many more talented people on this forum than myself that have posted code and techniques and I have used tons of features explained on this forum and have incorporated many of the stuff explained by Erika, Mark, Ray the Reaper, Bharat, Carl, Bob Hansen, Walt and many others into this application.
The basic concept of my application design is a client record exists once with many sales events records for each client and multiple financial occurrences as another separate set of records.
The basic client database contains a unique record contained only once in the database regardless of how many times the customer receives services. This is my parent record. This record contains basic data that is mostly static (not unique to each sales cycle). In this application I store home address, shipping address, telephone numbers, insurance data and other standard data that will be used repeatedly across the life of the client.
This data is displayed on the top third of my main screen.
You will notice in the images of this application Sesame allows me to nest all clients home address, shipping address and telephone data in one small area of the screen using Sesames great tab feature. Additionally on the telephone tab I have an additional set of tabs that allows tabs for home phone, work phone, cell phone and fax numbers plus the automated dialing feature. In previous applications storing and presenting the numbers to the user took up a third of the screen alone.
The remainder of my main screen is a large tab that contains many forms and subforms.
The first tab is a subform of my second database called events (I am calling each individual sales or service cycle an event) basically after the static data is entered in the first database I start an event for every sales cycle for this customer. This tab is a Tableview of that data. It is intended to quickly at a glance show you all the different activity (sales cycles) this customer has had. It contains a command button for adding additional events, pop up menu choices for types of events, start date, unique event id# and the clients unique record number from the parent database. There are many neat features built into this database to handle data input and validation using Sbasic.
(as a side note the event type is numbered automatically based on type of event using Erika explanation to sunnyJenna in a previous post)
My goal is to be able to click on any line in the tableview and have it bring me to the specific detail of that event. For now I manually click on the second tab named Event Detail. This tab contains a subform in form view from my second database Events but since it is not a table it contains only the data for one specific event. You will notice in the images that this tab contains 3 additional tabs all relating to detailed data of just this particular sales cycle. An example of how this works is at the time of this service a clients insurance might be the same as the data in the basic database, if it is a command button is pressed to automatically fill the fields. If any data is different for this event it is added only to this event. In this way if the insurance for this customer changes as time goes on I will have separate billing and collections based on this data not newer insurance that did not cover this event. In this events record all contacts with this client is recorded from the start till a financial obligation is created.
(one of the many great features Sesame allows me to have using Sbasic in this database is based on the event type element I use Visibility commands to have elements specific to the type of event appear and disappear only as needed. For example if a diagnostic study is being scheduled study date and time elements are presented to the user if a one time sale of a product is created a picking ticket subform is presented)
The next main tab is Financial overview. My third database is basically a financial ledger. Each record is either a debit or a credit. Anytime a sale is generated the receivable is created attached to the parent record and anytime a credit is posted from a payment, insurance adjustment, co pay or credit memo a record is created attached to the parent record. On this tab I have a subform from the third database in a table format. So like my activity subform a user at a glance can see all the financial transactions listed in a tableview and know exactly what has transpired regarding billing and posting. A collections person uses this screen and the next tab financial detail in conjunction to collect monies owed and post payments. The financial detail tab is a subform in form view of one specific transaction. This is were notes pertaining only to this transaction is entered and is used for statements and collection letters.
There are numerous other tabs that have even more tabs and subforms that I use to do electronic billing, store scanned document images and many more pieces of this ever growing test project. A few neat features in these screens are using Sbasic command FileExists to check to see if a document exists on the server and place a checkmark in a box on the documents viewable for this client and I have a form that is an exact representation of a medical form we use. By entering an event number in a element it fills out the form from data contained in all the different databases associated with this application, upon pressing a command button it validates the data using Sbasic programming for correct formatting and completeness and uses @color to turn any incorrect elements red background with white text. I also use the zip code database to fill out the city state and time zone automatically.
There are way to many things that Sesame has allowed me to do to cover in this post but I hope this gives you some insight into how I am attempting to use Sesame. If anything is unclear please feel free to ask for clarification.